


You never know what can kill you (so stay inside)

by charons_boat



Series: The Expansion Packs: Three Sentence Prompts Edition [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Anger, Bog - Freeform, Funeral, Ghosts, Hallucinations, Hospitals, Injury, Jealousy, M/M, Maps, Mark is Nancy Drew (kinda), Mentions of Drowning, Mentions of Imprisonment, Mentions of Violence, Mentions of choking, Moving On, Murder, Mystery solving, Nostalgia, Regret, Stubborn Characters, anonymous tips, character harm, digging up bodies, existential awareness, ghost eating, ghostly powers, gruesome injury, haunted bog, indistinct passage of time, intimidating strangers, letting go, missing teens, planting flags, scaring off, supernatural fog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23252857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charons_boat/pseuds/charons_boat
Summary: Donghyuck had lived in the bog for years, and it was peaceful aside from the few odd visitors he had to scare away. Its reputation was enough to keep most away, though Mark Lee had been the one exception for the past few years. The ghost kept hoping that eventually the human boy would give up, but Mark was just as stubborn as he was, and it seemed he was going to keep coming back whether Donghyuck liked it or not, even if it may end up killing him.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan & Lee Jeno, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan & Mark Lee, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan & Na Jaemin, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan & Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Series: The Expansion Packs: Three Sentence Prompts Edition [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1671889
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	1. An Introduction of Donghyuck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [speckledsolanaceae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speckledsolanaceae/gifts).



> This is part of a series!! The series is based on fun writing challenges I do on twitter sometimes. 
> 
> The original prompt for this was markhyuck haunted bog from speckledsolana on twt! The summary is what I originally wrote!

Lee Donghyuck lived in a bog. It was wet, and muddy, and mist often covered it like a malevolent miasma. He'd been there for as long as he could remember, though he could never remember how he first ended up there; all he knew was that he would never leave the cool wetland and its mash up of sodden ground and mosses, reeds, and carnivorous plants. 

Most people stayed away, and Donghyuck often quickly rid his home of unwanted ghosts. He was the only one trapped on the wrong side of death allowed to be there, by his own rules. Sometimes there were odd visitors, tourists having heard stories or ghost hunters with phony equipment that would've never worked in a thousand years. Most often, it was just stupid teens from a town nearby. Donghyuck thought that if he tried enough, he could remember his past and what happened that led to his afterlife in such a dismal, insect-infected mire, but he really didn't want to know. 

Donghyuck was many things. He was a ghost, having died a longer time ago than he cared to remember. He was constantly soaked through, dripping water and trailing tiny leaves from duck weed, along with long strings of algae. He was pale, and his neck was bruised dark and angry when he looked at his reflection. He was young and he was feared. He was a force to be reckoned with on even the best of days, a force you'd never want to meet on the worst of them. Donghyuck was antisocial to the extreme, and he preferred his bog with only the bugs and the fish. He had matted, dark silver hair and brown eyes that could be called black in almost any lighting. His white shirt was ripped and see through with wetness, and his jean shorts weighed an extra three pounds, the frays on the cut ends stained with mud.

Most of all, Lee Donghyuck was a coward.


	2. An Introduction of Mark

Mark Lee was most easily described by the words awkward and stubborn. For most of his life, he'd been an awkward, lanky kid who often ended up apologizing for knocking things over. His glasses were probably too big, and he'd quit the flute after being teased relentlessly, to the point that many would call it bullying. Another thing about Mark was that he was too kind for his own good and never blamed anything on anyone other than himself. 

Mark also had a tendency to try and solve mysteries. He called in anything he found anonymously, of course, afraid to get called Nancy Drew or something equally as embarrassing at school. Once he found something to work towards, he wouldn't stop until he'd gotten to his goal. He'd helped find quite a few missing items, and he'd happened across more than one buried body while chasing the clues for another. His town was relatively small, near a massive bog, and there weren't many places to hide bodies. Many were scattered around the edges of the bog, though never too far in. 

The thing about the bog was that it was haunted. Sure, the ghost hunters never got anything when they went in, but they were all hacks anyways. People had run from the place screaming, and while Mark was unsure anyone had ever died inside the wide basin of mud and water, there were plenty of bodies buried around the place to warrant at least a few ghosts. The fog that hung over the place constantly, even in the midst of summer, lended even more credibility to the rumor of vicious, ruthless ghosts haunting the place. 

Only, there was only ever tell of one ghost, and the descriptions sounded eerily similar to the picture of a teen about his age who'd gone missing decades ago.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of digging up bodies,

In the beginning, especially after the first time I'd scared him off, it seemed that the boy with black hair was just like everyone else. When he came back, I wasn't sure how long it'd been, but I had a feeling it hadn't been too long, merely by virtue of the fact that he hadn't changed much, if at all.

The first time he visited, he wasn't very old. He had to have been less than ten years old, still round-faced and bright eyed behind his thick glasses. He must have wandered in on accident, because when he stepped in a shallow puddle and pulled his foot out of the mud, now missing a shoe, his white sock blackened by rot-mud, he crouched down and cried. Chasing him away was incredibly easy, the entire ordeal lasting maybe three minutes and involving mostly rustling behind him until he ran the opposite direction, right out of the potential, watery grave. I watched him run into his mother's arms, saw her bundle him up in her arms and bustle away as he stared towards me, sucking on his thumb.

I was bad with time. The second time he came, he was a little taller, but not much. His face was ever so slightly more defined, but he wore the same glasses and his black hair still looked like he'd come without brushing it. The thought might've made me run my fingers through my own hair once, if it were closer to the beginning of my time here, but I'd learned since that it wasn't just mud and bog debris that matted my hair. He was harder to scare away that time, seeing as he hadn't lost a shoe or come on accident, but he left all the same when the wind began howling around him, whipping his hair one direction and his clothes another.

He didn't visit for a while after that, and I smiled at the thought that maybe I'd finally gotten rid of him. He'd just been a little tougher than most people. I gave myself a pat on the back with the arm that didn't hang wrong and smiled to myself, singing in a rough, mutilated voice. But then, some time later -though I couldn't have told you how long it was- he came back, and I knew it must have been a while, because his face was more angular and he was much taller, lankier.

For once, he didn't come into the bogs, just wandered around the edges with a shovel in hand. I didn't realize what he was doing until he uncovered something long and white, promptly freezing before collapsing to his knees and sobbing.

 _What was he doing digging up the bodies around the bog?_ Of course I knew they were there, because I'd often watched them being buried. I didn't care to remember their faces or where they were past getting rid of their ghosts once they surfaced, though I was certain that were I to try, I’d be able to plot out each one on a map. Watching him almost made me wonder where I'd been buried, but then I remembered that I hadn't died kindly nor been found, seeing as I was still around, and I figured that I wasn't buried so much as I was most likely covered by layers and layers of mud. There must have been a reason I was drenched and often found myself resting in the water, after all.

Every time he visited afterwards, he did the same thing. He wandered before pausing and beginning to dig, though his reactions to finding bodies stopped being quite so violent. He never entered the bogs, seeming to hardly even realize they were right in front of him. Everytime he found a body, he'd put a flag in the ground and leave, tears streaming down his face, and then he'd return and do it again. It was weird, sometimes, to begin thinking about him idly and to compare him now to him when he was younger and so easily scared. I felt something stirring somewhere in my chest when I saw him crying, and sometimes I'd end up wondering what he looked like when he was smiling or laughing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of hallucinating, drowning, choking and panic.

I'd been in stasis, the closest I could get to sleeping, when I felt someone step into the bog. I sat up out of the water, the surface staying completely still as the phantom of a heart hammered in my chest, false breath rattling in and out through my barely functional windpipe. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was standing in front of him. He was still quite a few yards away from me, though I saw him down at the other end of the straight stretch of more solid mud as clearly as if he were six inches away. It was him again, his dark hair messed up by wind instead of sleep, his eyes wide and curious behind his glasses. For half a moment, the image of him was replaced by a younger image, and I screamed.

My eyes closed of their own accord, my hands coming up to cover my ears and my mouth dropping open farther than it should've as the high, raspy scream tore its way out of my throat. I thought I might have heard him scream as he was blown sideways by a strong wind, his feet sinking into the soft mud. I heard the splash when he fell backwards into the water, and I closed my mouth, dropped my hands, and opened my eyes. I watched him struggling in the water, trying to swim to shore. Seeing it made me remember being held under the water, powerful hands pressed tight around my throat. The water I kept swallowing wouldn't come up, and he pulled me up and threw me down. There'd been a crack, and pain had erupted in my head. Hands encircled my throat and pressed in again, and after what felt like years, the pressure lifted and I was thrown into the water. 

I watched the boy floundering in the water, the panic in his eyes reflecting that which I'd once had in my own. He managed to find some kind of traction against the mud and pulled himself out of the cool water. He lay in the muddy path, his white shirt transparent and stained with mud. His chest heaved, and tears fell down his cheeks. I stared down at him, a frown tugging at my lips. I clicked my tongue and huffed, and he passed out. I forced his body up and walked it out of the bog, leaving him collapsed at the edges. His dark hair was plastered to his head, and I realized as I idly touched the indent near the base of my own that his glasses were gone. I huffed again, and when I looked down at my hand, they were already in my palm. I put them on, but they did nothing to improve or degrade my sight. They were cracked when I took them off, and the frown tugged harder at my lips before I set them down next to his head.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of maggots/decomposition and drowning.

For whatever reason, he kept coming into the bog after he nearly drowned. He didn't have the shovel with him, just himself and his cracked glasses. It pulled at something in my chest that he hadn't replaced them, and I wondered if worms had begun eating my real heart. I wasn't sure how long it took for that to happen, but surely there weren't many maggots underwater. They didn't seem to me like something that should be able to survive underwater. 

After the first few times, I stopped trying to make him leave, though I had no such mercy on other visitors. I hadn't thought it possible, but I'd found someone just as stubborn as I'd been in life, and I wasn't going to let him go so easily now that he'd decided to keep coming. Whenever he went to leave, his shoes would sink into mud or the wind would blow so strongly that he'd have to fight it to leave. Sometimes the fog thickened to the point where he couldn't see more than a few inches in front of him, or the plants would drag at his ankles. I think it scared him at first, but after a while, he began to laugh when things like that happened. 

I remembered wondering at some point what he looked like laughing and smiling. I couldn't tell whether or not I was happy that I knew now.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of being strangled/choked and references to Donghyuck's injuries.

"My name is Mark. I don't know whether you knew or not," he said one day. He was just sitting on a relatively dry patch of mud, in the same basketball shorts he always wore now. I guessed it was just so that only one pair of shorts would get ruined. He didn't wait for a response, just picked a clump of moss out of the ground and looked at it as he spoke. "Y'know, no matter what the weather's like outside, it's always cool and foggy down here. It's like, 92 Fahrenheit out there, but in here? Nowhere close. Is that on purpose, or just, like, an accident?"

"It's always been like this," I'd whispered in response, my voice strangled-rough. In life, I'd always been a coward around new people. It seemed that it was still true even in death, despite my having consumed dozens of weaker ghosts and being a vicious ghost that looked like I'd been thrown inside a concrete truck full of water, mud, and rock. He heard me anyway, and his head snapped up. He whipped around, trying to find me, but I stayed hidden. Now that I'd accepted his presence, I didn't want to scare him off with the way I looked. I knew it was bad. 

"Dude, c'mon! Where're you at? I don't think it's fair that you get to see me and I can't see you," he said, sounding bitter and somewhat upset. That reminded me that I could only see out of one eye. I wasn't sure how I'd forgotten, not with it seeming so obvious now, but only my right eye functioned properly. 

"You don't want to see. It's real bad. I'd better just stay where I'm at," I said, my voice ringing out through the fog. He stood up, not even bothering to brush the mud off his shorts, and he stayed completely silent. I could hear his heart beating in his chest. His lungs began to quiver with the strain of holding his breath. I didn't realize I was holding mine until he looked into the water. 

"Is that where you are? The water," he asked quietly. I swallowed and sighed, closing my eyes. I was right next to him when I opened them again, staring at the water out of one eye with him. 

"What's with you and guessing where all the dead bodies are," I muttered. He jumped and turned to look at me. I didn't look at him, though I saw out of the corner of my one eye that he covered his mouth, and I frowned. When I sighed, my jaw dropped lower than usual and I heard him gag. I closed my mouth with a clack and looked away. "I should probably go."

"No, wait, I'm sorry, I just- I didn't expect it to be, like-"

"I know. It's okay, Mark. It's fine. I know I'm not pretty to look at. I mean, I don't even look at myself," I said with a humorless laugh. I sighed and closed my eyes. 

"Please, wait," he exclaimed. I opened my eyes again and looked at him out of the corner of my eye. "What's your name?" I frowned and tried to think. 

"Lee something. I think my friends used to call me Haechan," I said, staring at the sky. I frowned more, looking towards the water as my brow furrowed. "I don't think I have a lot of those. Not anymore, at least. They never called me Donghyuck, just Hyuck or Haechan, though for the life- I can't remember why." I didn't look at Mark again, just closed my eyes and went away, letting myself float in a pool of water far away from him. He got out without being hindered by anything in the bog.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for more explicit descriptions of Donghyuck's injuries and being attacked. Descriptions of choking and also lots of cursing.

"Donghyuck? Are you here?"

Mark's voice rings out through the fog, loud despite the fact that I know he's speaking quietly. The bog likes to bring me evidence of his presence much sooner than it would arrive otherwise. I groan and sit up, smiling at the way Mark shouts surprised curses. I blink and I'm standing in front of him. It's the first time I've decided to wake up while he was here since I told him my name. He takes a moment and just looks at me. He looks at my pale skin and the dark bruises visible through my soaked white shirt, almost looking like little more than more dirt stains. He sees the dark bruises around my crushed windpipe and the way my arm hangs slightly lower, not attached quite right anymore, just like my jaw. He looks at my eyes, and I wonder what he sees. I haven't had the time or courage to look at my reflection to find out for myself. I turn around and begin to walk away, and I wonder if he can see where the rock nearly broke through my skull. He doesn't say anything, just follows me.

When I sit down, he sits too. I stare at the water while he watches me rest my bare feet in the water. Had I always been barefoot?

"Donghyuck? You're sure that's your name," he asks after a long silence.

"I've thought about it," I tell him, looking towards the sky. I wonder what the stars look like, and find I can't remember. It must have been too long. "I'm almost certain that it's right. Why does it matter?" I know why it matters. Names are important, no matter how alive you are.

"How long have you been here," he asks instead of answering me. I shrug.

"My whole life, I guess. I don't really like remembering a time before here, for some reason," I tell him quietly, struggling to get words out. My nose scrunches up and I try to continue. "I think, maybe, because it was a lot better before. Because if I remember before, I'll eventually remember even more about why I died. Even just from-," I break into a fit of coughing, and he refrains from touching me. "-what I remember isn't fun to remember."

"Donghyuck, I can't help you if you don't at least tell me where you are," Mark says kindly, worry evident in his voice. I get angry.

"What, you wanna dig me up? Wanna get rid of me? This is where I belong, Mark! I'm not going to leave," I yell at him. He flinches, and I put my jaw back into its socket.

"Donghyuck, you've been missing for over fifty years! Your parents are dead and your friends all think you're still out there somewhere! I've talked to some of them, and they all say the same thing. _Hyuck is too stubborn to let himself die. Hyuck found some hunk to run away with and they're over in Hawaii drinking coconut milk. Hyuck is still alive, he just ran away. The police don't know what they're talking about._ It's time you moved on, Donghyuck, you've been here too long," he tells me, sounding angry that I'd even think of wanting to stay hidden. Rage takes over my face and I push him onto the ground, wrapping a hand around his throat. I snarl in his face as I choke him.

"I know exactly what I have to do to move on, Mark Lee, and it's reliving this and accepting it! I have to pretend that it doesn't matter that my asshole of an ex-best friend got angry I was dating his man and dragged me out to some fucking bog on the edge of our shithole town! I have to just ignore the fact that someone I used to trust got jealous enough to choke me while I was underwater, and then throw me out of the water with so much force that a rock nearly broke my skull open, only to choke me some more and throw me back in! That's not even mentioning my arm or my fucking mouth or my goddamn eye, Mark! You want me to just pretend all of that was okay?! You're fucking nuts," I shout in his face. His skin has gone purple by the time I let go. There's a darkening circle around his throat, and I put my hand to my own bruise and stand up. He gasps for air, and I can hear by the rattle of air that I've broken his throat like mine was. He's crying, and he's trying to speak.

"D-don- _kof_ Donghyu-hyu-hyuck," he stammers, coughing and wheezing. "S-sor-r-ry. So-sorry." He's sobbing, and it's the most pained, painful sound I've ever heard. He just keeps saying he's sorry as he lays on the ground. Right up until he passes out, he apologizes.

I don't really think about what I'm doing as I pick him up and walk through the bog, going through water and mud alike. Walking into the town is weird. Everything has changed, like I've been gone for years. I have been, I realize as I walk down what used to be my street. I wonder if Yukhei is still around or if he left town once he'd killed me for daring to date Jungwoo. When I knock on the door to Jeno's old house, I wonder if I actually hit his door, and then I wonder whether he still lives here. The door opened, and an old man appeared. I recognized him immediately despite it having been over fifty years, as Mark had said. But what was Jaemin doing in Jeno's house?

Jaemin stared at me, his mouth dropping open. I looked down at Mark, and my mouth dropped open to speak. Jaemin's eyes followed the way my jaw fell too far when I spoke.

"I think I almost killed Mark. Can you drive us to the hospital," I say quietly, and I don't think about the roughness of my voice. All I can think of is how the hospital is too far away for me to make it there in time, and I can't just go there with Mark. Somehow, I know that it doesn't work like that.

"Jeno," Jaemin screams over his shoulder. "Grab the car keys! We're going to the hospital!" I hear the clatter of keys as Jeno presumably grabs them, coming to the door and handing them out to Jaemin with a look of puppy-like confusion in his eyes. He looks at me and tears immediately well up in his eyes.

"What-"

"Questions are for later, Jeno. We can't speak first and act later, not right now. Mark might die if we take too long," I tell him, finding it odd that for once I'm trying to act first and think later, the opposite of what Jeno and Jaemin always said we should do. They'd always like trying to talk out issues as a group.

We all climbed into Jaemin's car, the same one he'd had when we were in high school. I pulled Mark more upright, hoping it would help him breathe easier, staring into the back of the seat in front of me. Mark's face was cradled against my shoulder as I explained what had happened to them. I was surprised to hear that Yukhei had turned himself in after killing me, though he would never admit where the body was or that it was me that he'd killed. He'd died in prison a few years ago.

When we pulled into the hospital, I stayed in the car. Jeno and Jaemin decided to tell the nurse that they'd heard a fight in the street and had gone out to find Mark being strangled. I grabbed a napkin from the glove compartment and took a pen out of the console between the front seats. I blinked and a map appeared, the pen now nearly out of ink when it had been almost full. There was a small 'x' where I knew my body lay, buried beneath over fifty years' worth of mud and rotted plants. I left the detailed map in the back seat after writing 'please give this to MARK when he gets out'. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was alone in the bog. The fog was so thick that I couldn't see my own hands in front of my face.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to what happened last chapter

I was alone. It was lonely in the bog now that I'd met someone who wouldn't let me win. I'd thought that maybe he'd come back and dig me up, like he'd done to so many others, and he'd cry and leave a little flag when he unearthed my arm or my leg or my face, and then the police would come and finish the job. But he hadn't returned, and as lonely as I was, I knew it was entirely my fault. Jeno and Jaemin didn't even come, so I assumed that they hadn't been able to figure out what the map was showing. But then again, maybe they hadn't found it at all. 

I found myself hearing things. I wondered if my hearing was going out like the sight in my right eye had started to do. Out of nowhere, I'd sit up out of the water and whip my head around, thinking I'd hear his voice. When I was sitting in the middle of some of the shallower pools, still deep enough to come to the bottom of my ribs, I'd hear his laugh reverberating through the fog, full of life and joy. Sometimes, I'd hear him screaming, or crying, or gasping for air as I strangled him.


	9. Chapter 9

When he really came back, I thought it was just another made-up image. After all, I expected his voice to still be like mine, but then I'd forgotten that people could heal from their wounds unlike ghosts. Ghosts were as they were when they died, and I often forgot that.

The world was a foggy mix of grey and incomplete blurs. When he crouched down in front of me, I thought I was dying for real and just making him up to make it easier. He put his head in his hands and cried at the sight of me. I was lying in the mud, curled up on my side, my jaw slanted at an odd angle.

"Donghyuck," he asked quietly, speaking through his tears and ragged sobs. His voice was completely normal, as if I'd never put my hands on him. I stared through his legs, towards the edge of the bog. This was the clearest the fog had been for as long as I'd been here, and I could see a crowd of black blurs gathered around the edge. Trees? Or police officers? Was he going to have me arrested for attacking him? I scoffed at my own thought; he couldn't arrest a ghost.

"I'm sorry, Mark. I didn't mean to," I told him softly, not really speaking to him since I didn't think he was really there. His hand touched my arm, the one that was in its rightful place, and he let out a shuddering breath.

"You're so cold, Donghyuck," he told me.

"Really? I can't feel your hand. I barely felt you when I carried you into town. The water isn't warm, I guess. The mud is probably colder," I said, stating facts more than anything. I frowned. "I can't feel anything. I can barely see. Something's wrong with my eyes." Mark choked back a sob.

"It's okay, Donghyuck. Your friends are here to see you. I brought a shovel. I'm going to dig you up, and then I'll call the police," he told me. "I'll make sure you're buried properly after you tell your friends goodbye." I drew in a rough breath and tried to sit up, but my hand slid in the mud when I was halfway up and I collapsed again. I let myself lay there as I spoke to him.

"Are you going to be here when the police come? Or are you going to leave before they get here," I asked him. Tears fell down my face, feeling like ice. I thought it was odd that I could feel them, but maybe that was because they were something I'd made on my own.

"I'll be here. I'll stay this time. I told Jeno and Jaemin about all the bodies around the bog, about how I'm the one that finds all of them, and they said I should tell someone about it. I'll tell the police today when I call you in," he said.

"Do you still have the map," I asked. He nodded and pulled it out of his pocket. "If you've got a pen, I'll mark where everyone else is." I'd gone very quiet, my voice barely above a raspy whisper. You could've mistaken it for a breath of wind. He pulled me so I was sitting upright and held the napkin out in front of me, the pen in his hand poised to be given to me. I blinked and dozens of x's covered the image, mine circled in the red ink. It seemed fitting to me that death was marked in black and red. He didn't react to his pen emptying and the napkin being covered in ink farther than thick tears welling up in his eyes as he tucked it back into his pocket.

"I'll carry you over to them, okay," he asked. I nodded wearily and let him pick me up, much like I'd done for him when I almost killed him. He walked easily through the bog, like he'd been there as long as I had and knew where all the drier paths were. I held onto him with the one arm that still worked right and pressed my face into his chest. I could hear his heartbeat like the pounding of the drums that had been in my high school band. They'd always been so loud, but the memory of them hardly compared to the resonance of Mark's heavy heartbeats through my head.

When we were out of the bog, he set me down gently, wrapping an arm around my waist and keeping my arm around his shoulders. I looked up and saw my three best friends from high school, along with two boys I didn't know.

"Mark, who is that," the shorter of the two teens asked.

"Chenle, Jisung, this is Donghyuck. He's dead. We're going to dig up his body later, once he's said goodbye to his friends," Mark said. I looked at Jeno and Jaemin, standing next to Renjun. They were all staring at me, and I cracked a sad smile.

"I'm sorry I tricked you guys into thinking I ran away or something. I didn't want to trick you, I just… I didn't want to remember dying, so I didn't remember my life either. I just stayed here. It was easier," I told them quietly.

"Donghyuck, don't apologize to us. You got killed. You don't have to do anything. It's enough that you're here, talking to us now. We've missed you. So much has happened and seeing you, still the same as always… it's odd, but it feels right. I don't think you were ever really someone who was meant to grow old," Renjun said. Hearing him talk for the first time in so many years sent a few tears tumbling down my cheeks. I stumbled forward and hugged him, and then Jeno and Jaemin joined in and I was bracketed in by solid weight.

A feeling like warmth and fizz began to fill my head and spread from there, and suddenly I could feel their warmth against me. I stumbled out of their grasp and turned to Mark.

"I'm sorry, Mark. I really am. Thank you, though. Thank you, and bless you," I said. I was surprised to hear my own voice, not a hint of roughness anywhere. I glanced down, and saw that I was no longer so pale, my clothes dry though stained. I glanced up at Mark, and I realized I could see with both eyes, and my mouth dropped open in a way that told me my jaw was fixed. My arm didn't ache, and when I put my hand to the back of my head, there was nothing wrong. When I cried, my tears were still as cold as ice, but my nose began to run as well. I used my wrist to wipe my nose and sniffled.

"I'm sorry for all the times I've hurt or scared you. You'll do well in life, Mark. Just keep surviving. Keep living. You're really good at it."

I stuck around long enough to be buried, barely aware enough to know what was happening. My friends came to the funeral, and Mark did too. No one asked why the boy who'd been revealed as the town's Nancy Drew went to the funeral of a boy who went missing over fifty years ago. The casket was closed, and they threw bundles of flowers down for me. I gave Mark a hug from behind, and with a smile I was gone.


End file.
